East Witton Parish »
East Witton’s Churches
The parishioners of East Witton’s extensive parish originally worshipped at a small church in Lowthorpe dedicated to St. Martin. In 1810 this was described as “a very ancient building and in such a dilapidated state as to be almost ruinous and in an inconvenient situation for the parishioners being more than a quarter of a mile from the village”. It was therefore suggested to the Earl of Ailesbury that it would be a good idea to erect a new church in a more convenient location. Ailesbury owned a piece of land called The Flatts, upon which the new church and a vicarage were to be built, and in exchange he would take the former glebe lands in Lowthorpe. The Earl offered, at his own expense, to build the new church, and thus began a long series of letters between the Earl of Ailesbury’s agent and the secretary to the Bishop of Chester (East Witton was in the Archdeaconry of Richmondshire, part of the Diocese of Chester). Part of the contract included permission to pull down the old church of St. Martins to re-use the materials in the new church, but only “such as are above the surface of the earth” as there were many local worthies buried at St. Martin’s and “the scite [sic] of the old church and the old graveyard are to remain for ever undisturbed”.
Fortunately some record had been made of the old church before it was pulled down. It was low and very dark inside; it had a gallery and stained glass. Several benefaction boards recorded gifts to the parish from Elizabeth Barnett, Thomas Langdale, Thomas and Barbara Skaiffe, George Ryder, Henry Simpson and John Ballan. Within the altar rails flat stones with possibly medieval inscriptions covered the remains of long forgotten saints, and more recently Benjamin Purchas of Braithwaite had coveted this prime position for his own resting place in 1762. To be buried inside the church was preferred to being outside in the cold and rain. Thomas Nottingham of High Newstead was probably the last to be buried inside St. Martins in 1766.
Plans and a beautiful artist’s impression of the new church were drawn up. The road into East Witton from Masham was to be moved and the land to be exchanged amounted to eight acres. The new church would be entered through the tower, but would have a porch both south and north, and there would be a gallery for the singers between the tower and the back pews. It was hoped that the new church would be ready by Spring 1811.
The vicar of East Witton was Leonard Howson; he had come to the parish in the New Year of 1754 and served with great faithfulness. He married Mary Ballan of Jervaulx in 1756 and baptized five of his own children at St. Martins. I am sure that he greatly anticipated the opening of the new church but, like Moses gazing at the promised land, he never entered it. The Revd. Howson passed into glory on 24th. June 1811, having served God in East Witton for fifty six years. This left the parish in a dilemma; the old church had been pulled down, the vicar had died, no shepherd and no sheep pen.
A search for a new incumbent ended with William Jones, clerk, M.A., curate of Enford in Wiltshire, Diocese of Sarum. As the Earl of Ailesbury held estates in Wiltshire as well as at Jervaulx, Jones was probably recruited through him. However, the Revd. Jones was not filled with too much excitement at the prospect of the cold North and kept delaying his journey to Yorkshire - there was no house available to him in East Witton. Eventually he did move in October 1811, and lived with John Claridge, the Earl of Ailesbury’s agent, at Jervaulx.
At this point the new church was nowhere near being completed, but plans had to be made well in advance to book the Bishop to come all the way from Chester for the consecration. Lengthy correspondence was entered into trying to arrange a date which would suit the Bishop. The date would then be postponed because the building work had been delayed, this would inconvenience the Bishop, and so it went on. The threat of a French invasion was felt in 1811 when the Bishop was put off yet again because “The calling of the local Militia has impeded the building for some time past and although the roof is on I fear it will only be barely covered in by the time you mention. If it were possible to put off the Bishop’s visit ....”. Some of the local craftsmen - masons, carpenters etc. had been called to bear arms.
William Jones arrived to a parish in chaos. Even when the building was finally completed in the Spring of 1812, there was a delay before the Bishop came for the consecration. This meant that the Revd. Jones had still not declared his allegiance to the 39 Articles; he had not been able to publicly baptize infants; local couples had to go outside the parish to get married; no one had gathered together a congregation for reading the Book of Common Prayer and public worship for fourteen months, and some parishioners had wanted their dead to be buried in the new churchyard but it was not yet holy ground.
However, all was finally completed. The first stone had been laid on 27th. April 1810, and the sentences of consecration of the new church and churchyard were said on 1st. October 1812. The Bishop arrived at Jervaulx on 30th. September, with his entourage, for dinner at six o’clock, ready for the service the following day. And the Parish Church of St. John the Evangelist was at last fully operational. There had been no marriages in the village since 1810, and the first couple to take their vows in the new church were George Lye of East Witton and Ruth Harrison of Masham on 23rd. November 1812. Thus one chapter of East Witton’s history ended and another began.
Marion Moverley